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Introduction to Quantum Computing
This book provides a self-contained undergraduate course on quantum computing based on classroom-tested lecture notes. It reviews the fundamentals of quantum mechanics from the double-slit experiment to entanglement, before progressing to the basics of qubits, quantum gates, quantum circuits, quantum key distribution, and some of the famous quantum algorithms. As well as covering quantum gates in depth, it also describes promising platforms for their physical implementation, along with error correction, and topological quantum computing. With quantum computing expanding rapidly in the private sector, understanding quantum computing has never been so important for graduates entering the workplace or PhD programs. Assuming minimal background knowledge, this book is highly accessible, with rigorous step-by-step explanations of the principles behind quantum computation, further reading, and end-of-chapter exercises, ensuring that undergraduate students in physics and engineering emerge well prepared for the future.
382 pages, Hardcover
Published September 28, 2021
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June 10, 2025
There is much in this book that I appreciate. I chose it as the text for a recent class because it seemed like a better introduction to the subject than Kasirajan’s higher-level Fundamentals of Quantum Computing: Theory and Practice and certainly than Nielsen & Chuang’s comprehensive Quantum Computation and Quantum Information. Another option for this class was Hidary’s Quantum Computing: An Applied Approach, which does add the programming side but at the expense of covering nothing about quantum cryptography, which is something I definitely wanted to cover.
However, this book has significant downsides for my purposes. The most important is the poor introduction to quantum mechanics that LaPierre gives (but he shares this with Kasirajan and Hidary). My audience is students with no background in quantum mechanics, and for such students there needs to be a great deal of supplemental material beyond this book. However, if a student had completed a standard quantum sequence, then much of the first few chapters is boring review—but not something that can be skipped, since LaPierre interlaces standard quantum topics with new things like “qubits”, or standard things like entanglement with topics we don’t usually get to in a normal quantum sequence, like Bell’s theorem.
The discussion of the infinite square well seems particularly out of place. I understand that there’s some applicability when it comes to certain hardware implementations of quantum computers, but given how different this is from the finite-dimensional vector spaces of spin and qubits, it should have been put later in the book.
Indeed, with many sections I found myself changing the order of the presentation. For example, LaPierre uses bras, kets, and inner products before he introduces them. His math discussion is shallow, and I found it necessary to supplement that as well.
There are also a number of places where LaPierre misses offering physical insight. For example, his discussion of Bell’s theorem is rote, and presents “Bell’s inequality” as if there’s only one, with little insight given into its meaning on the Bloch sphere or what to do when quantum mechanics satisfies this particular Bell’s inequality (e.g., when using correlated entangled states rather than anticorrelated states).
That said, I found it fairly easy to pick up the quantum computing side of thing from his presentation, and I think his discussion of cryptography was adequate on the quantum side (although I feel like it needed heavy supplementation on the classical side, to explain why keys were so important and thus what quantum key distribution is so important).
In all, I found this an acceptable book for a one-term introduction to quantum computing, and think it would have been nice to have a full year so I could have covered more of the book. However, an instructor would need to provide substantial supplementation on the physics and some supplementation on the math.
I know a second edition has been completed, but it hasn’t yet been released, so I don’t know if it contains any changes that would affect my review.
Don’t trust the homework problems
I mostly made up my own homework problems, but I tried assigning three from the book. 5.2 and 5.5 are okay problems but need clarification because they’re poorly and ambiguously stated. 5.4 is flat-out wrong.
Exercise 5.4 (p. 86) asks the reader to prove that the Bell inequality he gives is satisfied if the initial state is not entangled. This cannot be proved, because it isn’t true. A top student of mine came to me having struggled with this problem for a long time, and I struggled with it myself for a while before concluding that it wasn’t possible to prove. I then looked at the solutions manual and found that indeed LaPierre doesn’t prove it. He shows that it’s true for one particular non-entangled state he picks, but of course it’s true for some entangled states as well! (In particular, it’s true for the Φ Bell states he gives on pp. 75–76.) Once I stopped trying to prove it and instead tried to disprove it, I found a counterexample in a couple minutes.
However, this book has significant downsides for my purposes. The most important is the poor introduction to quantum mechanics that LaPierre gives (but he shares this with Kasirajan and Hidary). My audience is students with no background in quantum mechanics, and for such students there needs to be a great deal of supplemental material beyond this book. However, if a student had completed a standard quantum sequence, then much of the first few chapters is boring review—but not something that can be skipped, since LaPierre interlaces standard quantum topics with new things like “qubits”, or standard things like entanglement with topics we don’t usually get to in a normal quantum sequence, like Bell’s theorem.
The discussion of the infinite square well seems particularly out of place. I understand that there’s some applicability when it comes to certain hardware implementations of quantum computers, but given how different this is from the finite-dimensional vector spaces of spin and qubits, it should have been put later in the book.
Indeed, with many sections I found myself changing the order of the presentation. For example, LaPierre uses bras, kets, and inner products before he introduces them. His math discussion is shallow, and I found it necessary to supplement that as well.
There are also a number of places where LaPierre misses offering physical insight. For example, his discussion of Bell’s theorem is rote, and presents “Bell’s inequality” as if there’s only one, with little insight given into its meaning on the Bloch sphere or what to do when quantum mechanics satisfies this particular Bell’s inequality (e.g., when using correlated entangled states rather than anticorrelated states).
That said, I found it fairly easy to pick up the quantum computing side of thing from his presentation, and I think his discussion of cryptography was adequate on the quantum side (although I feel like it needed heavy supplementation on the classical side, to explain why keys were so important and thus what quantum key distribution is so important).
In all, I found this an acceptable book for a one-term introduction to quantum computing, and think it would have been nice to have a full year so I could have covered more of the book. However, an instructor would need to provide substantial supplementation on the physics and some supplementation on the math.
I know a second edition has been completed, but it hasn’t yet been released, so I don’t know if it contains any changes that would affect my review.
Don’t trust the homework problems
I mostly made up my own homework problems, but I tried assigning three from the book. 5.2 and 5.5 are okay problems but need clarification because they’re poorly and ambiguously stated. 5.4 is flat-out wrong.
Exercise 5.4 (p. 86) asks the reader to prove that the Bell inequality he gives is satisfied if the initial state is not entangled. This cannot be proved, because it isn’t true. A top student of mine came to me having struggled with this problem for a long time, and I struggled with it myself for a while before concluding that it wasn’t possible to prove. I then looked at the solutions manual and found that indeed LaPierre doesn’t prove it. He shows that it’s true for one particular non-entangled state he picks, but of course it’s true for some entangled states as well! (In particular, it’s true for the Φ Bell states he gives on pp. 75–76.) Once I stopped trying to prove it and instead tried to disprove it, I found a counterexample in a couple minutes.
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